Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Molina stood up. She was a big girl now, in every respect.

If Matt Devine had anything to do with Vassar’s death, she would find out and arrest him. If Rafi found her and Mariah, he would be sorry. If Max Kinsella crossed her path again, in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d stop him no matter what it took. If Temple Barr was in mourning for the two men in her life, let her weep and wail.

If she, Carmen … no, Molina, had to destroy her career to bring down a murderer, so be it.

She went to her closet, opened the door, dropped her shoes on the floor, moved to turn the tumblers on the safe. Something elusive and soft brushed her wrist. She started to push it aside.

It was velvet. Midnight blue velvet, a limp, 1930s evening gown, Depression era; sleazy and soft and irresistible.

Molina frowned at the Blue Dahlia side of her closet with its meager column of vintage gowns. Carmen wasn’t here anymore, but her wardrobe was.

Blue velvet? God, she was losing it. She’d forgotten buying that one.

Or did she just want to forget? Not only the ancient past, but the recent one, all the way up to encouraging Matt Devine to make a date with destiny.

CHAPTER 28

… A League of Her Own

Matt had spent his working life on a phone for over a year now: first at the hot line and now at WCOO radio.

He was used to calls being urgent, to surprises, to communicating well despite the distance and the lack of face-to-face contact.

Now he was hanging on hold, waiting for the phone to be picked up again after a long, frustrating attempt to make contact.

He supposed calling the FBI might be like that. “Matt!” boomed a confident and somewhat superficial voice.

“Frank,” Matt echoed, determined to control this conversation.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m afraid I still need information on that woman terrorist, Kathleen O’Connor, only this time it might involve murder.”

“I came up dry last time.”

“I know. I believe in try, try again.”

“What’s the murder case?”

“Mine.”

“What?”

“Well, it cuts two ways, if you recall how Miss Kitty introduced herself to me a few months ago.”

“Humor does help, Matt. Yes, I remember. She cut you. Razor, wasn’t it? Odd weapon for a woman.”

“She’s an odd woman. She’s been stalking me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was there? All I can glean from what she’s said, which I don’t entirely believe, is that she has a grudge against priests.”

“You’re an ex-priest.”

“So I told her. It doesn’t seem to matter to her.”

“I know she’s been a thorn in your side for some time. What’s happened to escalate matters?”

“First, she started physically threatening my friends and acquaintances. Women, girls, old women, it didn’t seem to matter as long as they were female.”

“You are talking major-league obsessive.”

“Yes.” And Matt hated doing this sort of talking on the telephone. Despite a bug-free apartment, he still had the slimy sensation that someone was listening. It could be a hangover from his radio talk-show history, or just knowing that the FBI probably recorded everything.

“I wish we could talk in person.”

“Can you come out here?”

“Not right now.”

“Then shoot. If it’s not a matter of national security, this is a safe line.”

Matt grimaced. That wasn’t much of a guarantee, but he needed solid answers, not speculation. Besides, he had confessed so often to Father Frank Bucek when they were both in seminary, Frank as instructor, Matt as acolyte, that pulling back now seemed foolish.

“Okay. This woman made it plain: my virtue, or their lives.”

“Nasty. I assume you took measures.”

“I tried to. I got as much advice as I could—”

“From whom? You didn’t ask me.”

“I’m … sorry, Frank. Guess I was embarrassed.”

“What? That some woman was so infatuated she’d blackmail you into submission? You and Brad Pitt. Don’t be an ass, Matt. It’s like that out here in the real world. There are guys who would envy you.”

“That’s like telling an eighty-year-old woman she’s lucky to be raped.”

Silence on the line. Long silence. “You’re right. I was being cynical. It gets that way, if you see enough. Sorry. It works both ways. Stalking is stalking. So what advice did you get?”

“It was clear she wanted to destroy what I had taken out of the priesthood, my celibacy.”

“Odd fixation. Odd woman.”

“I know. So, my … friends … all urged me to lose my virtue and thereby my value to her.”

“It makes sense, but this is a senseless woman.”

Matt nodded, even though Frank couldn’t see the gesture. “The solution they came up with was that I take advantage of Las Vegas’s reputation as ‘Sin City.’ I was to take a circuitous route along the Strip, get a room for cash and then change the number, at an upscale hotel, and hire a high-class call girl to do the job, make me unfit for my stalker.”

Frank chuckled. “Surely an expensive way to go. Did it work?”

“Yes … and no.”

“I’m on tenterhooks.”

“I bet you are, you old married man. I bet you love hearing my odyssey of unwanted sex.”

“Maybe. It’s an interesting theological question: for love of your fellow man, should you submit to carnal knowledge, once against your vocation, and now against your free will and inclination only? If you were a woman, say St. Maria Gorretti: virgin, rape victim, and martyr, the answer would be a resounding yes. But the Church is a bit more ticklish about male self-sacrifice.”

“Apparently not in seminaries.”

“Whoa! Where did that come from?”

“A former St. Vincent’s alumn who approached me. That’s not what I meant to call about, but he says there was a lot of abuse back when we were there. Was there, Frank?”

Another silence. “God, I hope not.”

“You don’t know? You were an instructor, a confessor, a mentor.”

Silence. “I … honestly don’t know. Did you see it?”

“Maybe. But I didn’t know enough to recognize it.”

“You never—?”

“No. I’m told I was fairly unapproachable by then.”

“Ah, yes. Mr. Angel-face iron man. Not unapproachable, really, just closed like a work-in-progress freeway. I knew you were chewing on family issues. I respected that. Leaving you alone to do it seemed the best course. That work out?”

“Eventually.”

“Good enough. So you came through unscathed.”

“I thought so, but if others didn’t, then there’s no honor in that, is there?”

“No. It’s hard enough to outgrow your childhood and your past, then you learn that it was all corrupt. I wasn’t, Matt. I was as shit-faced innocent as you were then. That’s no excuse.”

“Yes, innocence never feels like enough of an excuse. She’s dead, Frank.”

“Whoa again. We’re out of the seminary here. Who?”

“My … salvation. The invulnerable Las Vegas call girl.

She fell to her death in the hotel atrium after I left.”

“Fell.”

“Archangels fall. She could have been pushed.”

“And you take the fall. Well, my money is on your stalker. She would be the kind of jealous bitch to teach you both a lesson for trying to get around her.”

“That’s why I need you to dig deeper, Frank. I know this woman was an IRA operative. She may have been very clever, very undercover, but she was loose in northern Ireland as Kathleen O’Connor about seventeen years ago. She had a second career squeezing money out of very wealthy Irish-Hispanic men in South America after that. She must have left some kind of trail. With the emphasis on foreign infiltrators now, surely you can find something on her. She isn’t a ghost.”